U.S. Pavilion Organizers Announce Exhibitors and Associate Curator for the 2018 Venice Biennale

US Pavilion Venice Exhibitors — Williams and Hernandez won the 2016 PXSTL design-build competition.

*Image courtesy of Michael B. Thomas / Pulitzer Arts Foundation*

US Pavilion Venice — After Belonging, DESIGN EARTH’s drawing presented at the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale with Reid Fellenbaum, Ya Suo, Jia Weng, Shuya Xu, Saswati Das and contributions from Rixt Woudstra.

*Image courtesy DESIGN EARTH*

The organizers of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale have selected a group of seven architects, designers, and landscape architects to create work for the exhibition Dimensions of Citizenship at the 16th edition of the international exposition.

Exhibitors will include artists Amanda Williams & Andres L. Hernandez of Chicago; Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm Design Earth; Diller Scofidio + Renfro and SCAPE, both based in New York, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman of San Diego, California; New Haven, Connecticut-based Keller Easterling; and Chicago’s Studio Gang.

Running from May 26 to November 25, 2018, Dimensions of Citizenship will grapple with the idea of belonging and the meaning of being a citizen. Each team will investigate a different “special condition of design and citizenship,” according to a statement from the show’s two institutional co-commissioners, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and the University of Chicago.

Earlier this month, the organizers announced three curators who will steer the exhibition: the University of Chicago’s Niall Atkinson, an associate professor of art history; architect Ann Lui, an assistant professor at SAIC and the co-founder of Chicago-based Future Firm; and Mimi Zeiger, a Los Angeles-based architecture critic, curator, and educator. The trio is joined by SAIC faculty member Iker Gil, the director of MAS Studio, as associate curator. SAIC and the University of Chicago will serve as co-commissioners of the show.

The organizers have also assembled a curatorial advisory board, comprised of public artist and designer Theaster Gates; Graham Foundation director Sarah Herda, who co-curated the inaugural Chicago Biennial; University of Chicago’s Bill Brown; SAIC’s Mary Jane Jacob; and artist and designer Oliver Palmer.

The Biennale will be curated as a whole by Irish architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, co-founders of Grafton Architects, around the theme “Freespace.”

Coverage of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale sponsored by Hunter Douglas Architectural.

Miriam Sitz was a staff writer and editor for Architectural Record from 2015 to 2020, during which time she served as the web editor, then senior news & web editor. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.